I’ll just say it: I don’t think the political pundit class understands just how toxic the Swiss/Caymans/Bermuda accounts issue is for Romney. Not that they don’t know it’s a liability at all. But I don’t think they realize the extent of it.

Ironically, Marshall himself probably will not get at the full truth, although he may well print more of it than others will. A writer in his position can go only so far.

The question before us is a simple one: What is Bain? This post won't offer a definitive answer, but it will offer a starting point to anyone who wants to research a startling possibility: Bain began life as a money laundry for the CIA.

What is in Romney’s offshore accounts? He has sheltered much of his wealth in tax havens such as Bermuda, but he has not disclosed anything about those investments.

The man has hidden his money from the tax collector very assiduously, and may well be even more affluent than most now believe. (His wealth is currently estimated to be $250 million.)

Why is Romney still being paid by Bain Capital? He left the firm more than ten years ago. Given its varied investments, could the fact that he is still being paid by them create a conflict of interest in office? Shaxson writes, “Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income.

The money is coming from offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.

Why has Romney opened foreign bank accounts, such as a Swiss account with $3 million that appeared on his 2010 returns but not his 2011 returns?

Romney has a $102 million Individual Retirement Account. No-one has any clear idea as to how someone could amass that kind of IRA. Wikipedia confirms that, during the years Mitt was with Bain,

The limit is up to $5000 now. Sorry, but $102 million just seems out of the question.

Dirty money. Let's get back to the Nation piece. Here's where things get really weird. (I've added paragraph breaks to aid readability.)

Did Bain serve as a tax haven for foreign criminals? As Shaxson explains, “Private equity is one channel for this secrecy-shrouded foreign money to enter the United States, and a filing for Mitt Romney’s first $37 million Bain Capital Fund, of 1984, provides a rare window into this.

One foreign investor, of $2 million, was the newspaper tycoon, tax evader, and fraudster Robert Maxwell, who fell from his yacht, and drowned, off of the Canary Islands in 1991 in strange circumstances, after looting his company’s pension fund.

The Bain filing also names Eduardo Poma, a member of one of the ‘14 families’ oligarchy that has controlled most of El Salvador’s wealth for decades; oddly, Poma is listed as sharing a Miami address with two anonymous companies that invested $1.5 million between them.

The filings also show a Geneva-based trustee overseeing a trust that invested $2.5 million, a Bahamas corporation that put in $3 million, and three corporations in the tax haven of Panama, historically a favored destination for Latin-American dirty money—’one of the filthiest money-laundering sinks in the world,’ as a US Customs official once put it.”

Okay, this really is looking filthy. And spooky.

Maxwell. It is now pretty much universally acknowledged that Robert Maxwell was "spooked up" -- specifically, that he had been recruited by Mossad. His background with the Israeli services was revealed by Israeli agent Ari Ben-Menashe and confirmed by two British MPs -- the liberal George Galloway and the conservative Rupert Allason (who, as "Nigel West," writes about spy stuff), as well as authors Seymour Hersh and Gordon Thomas.

Respected journalist John Loftus -- who has very good Israeli sources -- determined that Maxwell covertly engineered military aid to Israel in 1948, as the state first came into existence.

The close proximity of his death to these allegations heightened interest in Maxwell's relationship with Israel, and the Daily Mirror published claims that he was assassinated by Mossad after he attempted to blackmail them.

For a very detailed account of the Israeli "hit," see here. The piece is written by Gordon Thomas, whom I don't trust -- but his primary source appears to be former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, whose books I admire. A strange story, this: Maxwell apparently was killed by the very nation he midwived.

A side note: Thomas makes a further allegation which offers an eerie foretaste of the present Stuxnet controversy. He alleges that Maxwell helped make sure that governments around the world (including the USSR) used a case management software called PROMIS, developed in the United States. The Israelis and the CIA had put "backdoors" in the software which allowed outsiders to gain access to the database. All of this occurred in the 1980s, when people were a lot more naive about hacking.

Bain and death squads. It has been well-known for decades that the CIA has had close ties to the 14 families -- mostly late 19th century immigrants from Europe -- who financially commandeered El Salvador and who, for more than a hundred years, have run the place like feudal lords. In 1987, former CIA officer John Stockwell gave a talk that may have some relevance to the Vanity Fair piece referenced above.

Now we're pouring money into El Salvador. A billion dollars or so. And it's a documented fact that the... 14 families there that own 60% of the country are taking out between 2 to 5 billion dollars - it's called de-capitalization - and putting it in banks in Miami and Switzerland.

Markos Moulitsas, of Daily Kos fame, comes from a wealthy family in El Salvador, although his is not one of the fourteen. He also has a strange background with the CIA. Nevertheless -- and we must give credit where due -- Daily Kos published, back in 2008, a seminal work on Romney's connection to the Poma family and the death squad backers.

If you're my age, you'll remember the death squads, whose murderous depredations outraged and politicized quite a few young Americans. (Including myself.) The Salvadoran terrorists created some extremely ugly headlines around the world, especially when they assassinated Archbishop Romero. They also murdered American nuns, as documented in the photo seen here.

Horrors like these caused the Carter administration to withhold military assistance to El Salvador. Assistance arrived nonetheless, covertly, by way of Israel. The Israelis also used computers (even then!) to track politically active Salvadorans.

El Salvador's death squads were run by a fascist Army intelligence officer named Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA party, which was so far to the right that even the Reagan administration found it politically expedient to back the Christian Democrats -- at least in public, temporarily. Nevertheless, America's reactionaries, including Senator Jessie Helms, were firmly in the corner of ARENA.

It was not a secret that American intelligence aided the death squads. D'Aubuisson bragged about being funded by the CIA.

The CIA and military advisers have helped organize, trained, financed and advised Salvadoran army and intelligence units engaged in death squad activities and torture.

Also, the Washington Post reported on October 6, 1988 that the

Reagan administration depended on commanders of right wing death squads.
The U.S. shared some intelligence with them. U.S. intelligence officers
developed close ties to chief death squad suspects while death squads
killed several hundred a month and totaling tens of thousands.

Throughout the 1980s, many articles were published detailing the links between the CIA and the death squads; this page offers a grim selection. Much of this bloody history is now forgotten. It shouldn't be.

Eventually, ARENA came to power in 1988, and instituted a murderous campaign against leftists, intellectuals, priests and nuns; the party ruled with the proverbial iron first for two decades.

According to a 1985 CIA intelligence assessment, "Behind ARENA's legitimate exterior lies a terrorist network led by D'Aubuisson henchmen and funded by wealthy Salvadoran expatriates residing in Guatemala and the United States."

One of the powers behind ARENA was and is billionaire Ricardo Poma, a relative of Eduardo, listed above. Ricardo runs the Grupo Poma, which owns much of El Salvador. From Wikipedia:

I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent. When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me, and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Duenas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribandinarea.

"I came to Miami to find partners who would believe in me..." This phrasing conjures up the absurd image of Mitt Romney picking Miami pretty much at random, flying into town, and then asking random strangers: "Will you believe in me?" Of course, grown-ups know that life does not work that way.

This article (translated via Google) confirms that the same money which founded the death squads was also used to get Bain off the ground.

Bottom line: It is looking very much as if Bain was set up (in 1984) to help American and Israeli intelligence launder money for paramilitary aid and covert operations.

You probably knew this already, but Romney is a very close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu. They worked at the Boston Consulting Group at the same time--Romney went there right after Harvard.

BostonBoomer

posted by Anonymous : 11:18 PM

Then Promis; now Google.

On non-personal PCs, the weight of the many faces of Google goes together with standardised 'systems' for 'human relations', telephone billing (Amdocs), betting, financial transactions, etc.

And every fucking company and institution wants your fucking mobile phone number nowadays! (I'm nearing the point of telling them all "I'm not on the phone".) But of course when you enter a building or mall and your mobile phone number gets detected, it gets 'hashed' and no-one ever tracks anyone personally. Except when they deserve it. And why would anyone object unless they've got something to hide anyway? :)

Panama - see also Mike Harari - mentioned in this context by Victor Ostrovsky and also by Guy Debord!

posted by b : 6:02 AM

In this fucked economy Marshall needs to keep his job. I don't totally fault him for not being able to go further in his investigations. I don't fault any blogger for understanding the limits of what the system allows them to do. I can see that some bloggers give an occasional nod to their readers that they understand the nature of the beast but are under constraints. The viewers and readers of these media personalities need to be the grunts on the ground to help make sure the bigger truth can surface to a point where figures in the mainstream can talk about it without losing their livelihood.

Rachel Maddow got grilled the other day on Bill Maher's show for slavishly refusing to put some of the responsibility of Fast and Furious on Eric Holder. Eric Holder being a pussified and entrapped lefty let the right smear him and put up no fight whatsoever. Sound familiar? Said another way, Holder allowed himself to be Ass Raped by the wingnuts. Whatever claims the right made... Eric Holder fessed up to everything being the big Pussified Entrapped Lefty Patsy that he is.

It is interesting that Rachel Maddow who is entrapped herself by the MSNBC War Machine is herself of Russian/Dutch Catholic Irish ancestry. Her father is a former U.S. Air Force Captain and her family is all very Catholic according to wiki. MSNBC's parent is NBC Universal... NBC Universal's CEO is Steve Burke. He is a Republican and Irish Catholic and tied to Warren Buffet and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

I don't mean to make a big deal of the racial and religious connections here... above and beyond the race and religion angle I suspect another manipulation is going on by the elites... a Geopolitical manipulation. So it may be relevant to understanding how lefties are getting entrapped by the right and are useless in effecting change in America.

Maddow gets on MSNBC and is immediately made to pump for the War Machine which Americans are tired of. When Nick Gillespie challenged her on why Eric Holder was being such a big patsy on the Maher show, Maddow repeatedly poo poo'd the idea that there was any type of conspiracy involved. So Maddow is just another pawn on the Grand Chessboard being used by the right to keep the left from finding too many patterns that might reveal conspiracies.

Janet Napolitano is in the news today going on about how she sees a pattern in the string of wildfires hitting the midwest states. What is the pattern according to Napolitano? Global Warming. Really Janet? The whole world is under going Global Warming but it is only the USA that is beset year after year with massive wildfires.

Napolitano was raised in Pittsburgh, PA and New Mexico(one of the areas hit by the wildfires). She is Methodist according to Wiki but attended Jesuit RC run Santa Clara University.

Today wikileaks released a bunch of private Syrian emails of political figures... this comes just as the USA is ramping up aggression against Syria. How convenient. I thought Wikileaks was leftwing? Where are the Bush and Cheney private emails Wikileaks? German born Wikileaks doesn't of course believe 9/11 was a conspiracy. Wikileaks was born out of Berlin Germany's Wau Holland foundation and Chaos Computer Club. Researcher Dave Emory says that Wikileaks is tied to Nazis and Anarchists in Germany and Sweden.

Why would a group tied to Nazis and Chaos obssessed hackers be interested in releasing Syrian emails right while the USA is butting heads with Syria?

Oh wait.

So again what is the mechanism that makes the American Left leadership so pathetically useless?

-webslinger-

posted by Anonymous : 8:56 AM

webslinger, I agree it's useful to discuss how the left is being entrapped by the right, but can we do it sans the homophobic and misogynistic language? :)

The corporate elite already have muted much of the left's voice by installing the Uniter.2 in the White House.

Joseph, thanks for connecting the history on this. One of the things I hate the most about modern "journalists" is how they never do this. Still, I can't see this getting too big to ignore... there is too much at stake to upset the election applecart by crippling or removing either Thing One candidate or Thing Two. I think you misunderestimate the public's ability to ignore.

And as far as the American people being grown ups, they aren't in these Team Red and Team Blue exercises. Look at the bilge they swallowed and regurgitated about their OMessiah. His romantic story? He randomly and heroically chose Chicago to go do-good as a Community Organizer. Nevermind the reality, that he was laughed out of the community until he chose a church and "found Jesus." Or the reality of his political dealings with the slum lord. He came to do good, all right...and he did very well.

posted by prowlerzee : 10:37 AM

prowlerzee, I don't consider the phrase "Ass rape" to be homophobic... has not much to do with gender...more to do with willingly allowing oneself to be abused against your wishes...

As for the term "pussified"..yes I understand it can be considered misogynistic... the same way as if I said that the left was emasculated or de-balled...I use the terms because they are a visceral way of displaying how the left has become powerless... and of course those are antiquated terms...women can obviously rise to the occasion and kick ass just like men... I saw Prometheus... I will think of an equally visceral way to express the concept of being "Pussified" in a gender neutral way... the core concept here is that Obama, Holder and the Democrats are absolutely powerless it seems, and don't seem to have any interest in resisting the advances of the right who only want to repeatedly abuse them... they are subservient to the right just like in the old days women were expected to be subservient to men.. so maybe I should replace "Pussified" with "Subservient"?

~webslinger~

posted by Anonymous : 3:08 PM

Ralph Nader seems to like the word "castrated" to describe the Democrats...

Is that less offensive? Maybe we can try the word "neutered"? Or what about "spayed"? I guess to be totally gender neutral we can just say the Dems are "Fixed"?

What makes you think they are powerless to resist? I think you are falling into the trap of believing a lable. Occams razor would suggest that in fact, "the Lefts leadership" aint so left-wing.

In the UK we have a pretty good indication of quite how left wing Tony Blair was (JP Morgan and 20mn quid later). Perhaps you could predict Obama better if you assume he was as left wing as Blair.

Harry

posted by Anonymous : 5:32 PM

Webslinger...it's an ongoing process. I grasped the concept when someone explained to me that calling Ann Coulter "Mann Coulter" was derogatory to transexuals. I generally go with "limpdick" when trying to make an example that doesn't involve vaginas or their hygenic products. But that won't work in a future gender polite society!

posted by prowlerzee : 9:35 PM

Harry, your way of saying it may be correct too. Maybe the Dems as a whole are not really left wing. I do think many start off leftwing and then somehow get "trapped" or blackmailed.

The other issue we have which is more difficult to pin down is that it seems there are a lot of "agents" on the left wittingly or unwittingly working for the right through various mechanisms that keep them entrapped or bought.

The number of Catholics in media, and around 9/11 and other events like JFK and the Oklahoma City bombing has had me scratching my head alot lately. Something strange is going on there but I don't quite know what it is yet.

My suspicions are beginning to gather around one particular part of Catholicism that would be an attractive mechanism for those wishing to infiltrate it and use it to entrap agents into going along with schemes they would rather not... Confession

-webslinger

posted by Anonymous : 8:49 PM

Does it mean anything that Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes were all Catholics before getting entangled and entrapped in Scientology?

Is it significant that Katie Holmes had some involvement at Jesuit run all male St. John's in Ohio?

Does it mean anything that Scientology head Honcho David Miscavige is Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania? That as a boy he was sailing around on L. Ron Hubbards boat? That a lot of young boys were sailing around on his boat?

Does it mean something that Scientology audits children? (Auditing is basically a confession system like in Roman Catholicism). So what is the purpose of extracting confessions out of children?

Does it mean anything that NSA's Michael Hayden is Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania and is basically auditing, entrapping and entangling the entire USA???

Is there something above all of this gawdawful mess beyond ethnicity and religion that is using both as a control? That is blackmailing both Catholics and Scientologists to control high profile personalities? Is it foreign? Domestic? Both? Anti-Commie? Communist? Both? Who are these confessors and auditors involved with these big names? Who in turn are THEY tied to?

Who put all of these Catholics up at the top? Who put all of these agitating Catholics all over the airwaves? (Malkin, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck).. is this Rupert Murdoch's handiwork? Roger Ailes?

Something stinks.

Tom Cruise, if he were smart, would get out now and salvage what he can! They are not going to stop using you as celebrity prop.

I won't be posting anymore online. Seem to be getting some hints that I should stop if you catch my drift. Fine. This is not about race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality although I have brought those things up... this is about stopping a handful of elite pricks from destabilizing democracies in the name of centralizing their own control and wealth. Looks like 2012 is turning out to be the year of the Grand Unified Theory? (If I posted this twice I am sorry, just delete one)

webslinger

posted by Anonymous : 7:35 PM

webslinger...? What the hell does all of that RC stuff have to do with what I wrote?

I surely have not asked you to stop posting online. You are welcome here, and presumably on other sites. (Well, maybe not a Scientology website. And the Vatican website might ask you to tone it down.) If you think you are being threatened -- well, you're just being goofy.

Joe, was not talking about you at all. Not sure what I said that made you think that. Guess I was just not clear. I am talking about the fact that since I have been posting that stuff my computer has been repeatedly hacked and a few other weird things have happened hinting that the "all seeing eye" of Sauron may indeed be watching. I must have been hitting pretty close to the root of things. Whatever the case, I am going to give it a rest. Besides, it would be better to post somewhere that is more focused on what I wrote about. Thanks for putting up my posts even though half the time they might have been unrelated to your subjects.

webslinger

posted by Anonymous : 4:13 AM

Moultsas family, specifically Carlos Alberto Delgado Zuniga is a member of ANEP. He is head of the Hotel Association and one of the things I believe Poma does is built hotels.

Anep is an association of businesses that have always been associated with death squads and it is inevitable that you will find a link between Moulitsas family and death squads.

He left El Salvador not because of death squads but because revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the government were out to get his family, one who he claims was the "Education Minister" and education ministers at that time were in charge of fingering students who were sympathetic to the revolution who would then be kidnapped and killed.

Moulitsas has a horrific background, why no one looks at it is beyond me.

He has been "trained" by the CIA and claims the CIA has the best interest of the world in mind in it's actions.